 This is Nathan Hill, who is the Samoan Professor in Chinese Studies and Director of the Trinity Center for Asian Studies, as some of you may already know, and he's going to be giving a talk about the syntax of subordination with verb adjunct and binatic verbs in the old Tibetan and Anana. Just a terminological issue to start with, so I call an infinitive when I have a verb followed by the suffix do, followed by a verb, and then I call a verbal noun when I have a verb followed by the suffix par, followed by another verbal noun. So you can see already my kind of structuralist approach, right, where I'm just telling you what the morphology is and how I'm saying what I call it. But let's say par is definitely some kind of nominalizer, so par is a nominalizer in the termative case. So anyhow, this is the terminology I use, infinitives and verbal nouns. And then we're interested in these two verbs, which are to request and to agree. So these are both, you know, verb adjunct, and we're going to look at their syntax. So first, first half is about request, and the second half is about agree, more or less, I think. So subordinate clause is governed by the verb sol, request. We have in the old Tibetan Ramayana, we have infinitives occur in direct speech, and terminative verbal nouns occur in the narrative frame. So that's a, you know, I don't know. First, we just observe that distribution, which is kind of interesting, right. So all examples of sol governing infinitives in version one of the old Tibetan Ramayana. So there's about five different main scripts. I'm not going to go into the whole manuscriptology, you know, photocology side of things, but basically there's two versions of the old Tibetan Ramayana. And I only read version one because it's the older one. And then, you know, read historical linguists like to read old things. And then also version two is a copy, basically a version one with certain kind of editorial changes. So it's also a little bit more, you know, you get more one at the long, right, if you're working on version one. So anyhow, they only occur in, in direct speech. And in most, the speaker is requesting something from the addressee and is saying, you know, please do some action. So here are just some examples. So I request that you send a letter, he said. And I offer my daughter, I request that you accept her. Thus, he brought his daughter and offered her. And then in example three, I request that you ask them, he said. So these are all requests by the speaker to the addressee that the addressee do something. Now, in example four, the agent of the supported noun is not the addressee, but it's generic. So this is Sita, she says, I beg to be taken away from this ugly creature. So you can see, you know, it's a me. I read out just so you are convinced that there's a soul in it. And that it's so talk to soul, it's the, what do I call it, infinitive description. Okay, so I think that's interesting, this general one. So maybe if we have to read this fourth example as a kind of passive, maybe we can read them all as passive. Yeah, that's my conjecture. So we could say, request that a letter be sent, request that she be accepted, and request that they be asked. Where, you know, basically it's a question of what's the meaning of the construction versus what's the meaning of the circumstance, sort of semantics versus pragmatics, right? So I'm maybe suggesting here that in one case, the semantics have to be passive. So maybe we can have the semantics be passive in all cases, and that, or generic, maybe I should say rather than passive, but that, you know, pragmatically speaking, when I say, you know, here is a glass of water, it means I'm offering you a glass of water. If pragmatically speaking, I say, I request that she be accepted, it's clear that I'm asking for the address to accept her, okay. So passives are cross linguistically typical of the indirectness appropriate to polite requests. Please be seated, yeah, rather than saying please sit down. Please be seated is something I could tell you at the beginning of this talk, whereas if I say please sit down, the please is totally, you know, it's no longer polite, it's just sort of passive aggressive, right? So a patient focused meaning also characterizes the future stem in general. So this is, you know, I won't go into, but like when you form what would be like a gerund in Latin, you do it with the future stem in Tibetan. So futures have a kind of, you know, passiveness to them already. So that's kind of circumstantial evidence for this argument that I'm making. So I would say, well, maybe the future infinitive and by future infinitive, I just mean that the subordinate verb is in the future stem. So future stem do matrix verb, in this case, future stem do soul. So maybe future infinitives when governed by soul is syntactically a passive and pragmatically a polite request. Okay, so future infinitives of transitive verbs now are passive. So I'm looking for unambiguous transitive subordinate verb, like hunt. And this makes the patient prominence clear. I feel like that was a weak transition, but basically in all these request circumstances, there's, you know, like, please be seated. Well, be seated is an intransitive verb. And so I want a transitive verb to have it be clear, like is it passive or is it not passive? Yeah. But now also, I'm moving away from with soul. So I basically, I have a conjecture that future, future infinitives are passive. And I've kind of motivated this conjecture by looking at the infinitive structure, the infinitive structure with the superordered verb, the very Dichendi as the matrix verb, soul. So now I look in general, is it true that future infinitives are passive? So here we have example five, this is a deceptive deer, and it is not suitable to be hunted. So so So the clause, is not suitable to be hunted, where room means to be suitable. It includes no overt noun phrase. It doesn't say deer. Yeah. Neither the hunter nor the quarry, but just contextually, it's unambiguous that the unsuitability has to do with the quarry. It's not this hunter is inappropriate. Get me a different hunter. It's saying this quarry is inappropriate to be hunted. So anyhow, there it's passive. Yeah. Okay. So what about soul in the narrative frame? Everything so far is just in direct speech, right? So in the narrative frame, the verb soul governs the terminative verbal noun and not the infinitive. Naturally, those making the request, those to whom these requests are made and those who would engage in the requested activities are in the narrative frame. So they're all third person, right? So it's kind of, I don't know, it's pointing that that's what happens with narrative frames, they're all third person. So nonetheless, we get a variety of coreference relationships. And we can look at those coreference relationships. Yeah. So basically when is it same subject? When is it different? Yeah. Okay. So I'll just go through some of those. So the adoracy and the one performing the requested activity are both the king. So here they say they asked the king to come. So they're asked who's coming. It's the king. Yeah. So yeah. So here you get par rather than two. That's sort of what the whole paper is interested in. And then next the one requesting and the one performing the, the request activity are both Lakshina. So here the brother Lakshina asked to cross first. So it's, you see it's different here. We're asking the king to do something here. Someone is asking to do something himself. Yeah. But it's still this, the, yeah, anyhow. So moving along, request has supernatural qualities and three core and three core reference relationships are not relevant. So, so let's just look at it. They intended to ask that whoever they shot should, sorry, they shot would be hit lethally, but the goddess changed it. So the first arrow they shot would be lethal. So they wanted, you know, to have everyone they should die. And it's just actually you only get one chance. Yeah. First, first arrow you shoot. So here we're looking at this. So goon par sorwar. They, this is where it's to die. So they, they, the intended is in the matrix for they thought they thought to request that that, you know, should die if you like. So it's not what's easy. It's kind of clean core reference criteria. And like, is it the person asking who's doing the request? It sort of doesn't, it doesn't pertain because it's kind of principle. Yeah. Okay. So it looks like co-reference relationships are in no way encoded in soul in the narrative frame. Okay. So that's so so far so good, right? We just did soul. We did it in speech. And we found out that probably the future infinitive construction is passive. Then we looked at the verbal noun in the narrative frames and we said, nothing really to see here. Yeah. No, no conclusions possible. Okay. Now we turn to nang, which is to grant. So nang to grant also governs infinitives and termed a verbal nouns, but the obvious division of labor that we saw with soul isn't going to work. So, so instead of what's going on. Yeah. So the, instead, the present infinitive construction is used when the subordinate verb is intransitive and the soul argument is the same as the agent of nang. Okay. So now it's clear to you why did I even bother with when I looked at soul in, in, in, in the narrative frame? Why was I even looking at co-reference relationships? It's because it does matter with nang. So I've sort of shown it doesn't matter with soul, even though you wondered why I was doing it at the time. Well, it does matter with nang. So if these criteria are not met, we instead find the terminal, terminal, the terminal verbal noun construction. So this terminal just refers to the case marker at the end of the par, right? So, okay, present infinitives with the matrix verb nang, all examples of nang agree or grant in version one of the old Tibetan Ramayana happen to take motion verbs as their subordinate verb. I don't think that's part of the construction so nevertheless, we will see that when we look at the distribution of terminal verbal nouns governed by nang, it seems likely that the plot of the story and not some grammatical constraint is the reason why we see infinitives only with motion verbs. The intransitivity of these verbs is probably the salient factor. That's what I think, although, you know, you'd have to, like if you want to say no, no, no, it has to do with motion verbs. And then, of course, I have to go into the philology to find an example without a motion verb. And I won't find it in the old Tibetan Ramayana. So in example nine, he said, I shall not go and did not agree to go. So what I'm looking at is this sheksu manang no, right? So there, he did not agree for him to go with co-reference, yeah? And the intransitive subordinate verb. Then in 10, it doesn't seem like a Mahadeva will agree to come. So here we have sheksu nangwa is, I mean, and there's more to it for the doesn't seem that, but it's, it's the same basically as nine, right? So then in 11, would you nephews agree to go to Lankapura sometimes? So sheksu jinnang, where G is a question word, would you agree to go? Yeah. And then the Devaputras agreed to go, sheksu nangte, yeah? Okay, so now let's look at other present infinitives. Well, and I should just point out that in this case, in these cases, actually, the morphology doesn't make it totally unambiguous, but shek is a present. So one thing I'm noticing is that request takes future infinitives and agreed takes present infinitives. So sort of from there, then we're looking at how are future infinitives different syntactically from present infinitives. So other present infinitives of the verbs listed as taking present infinitives in an article that me and some colleagues wrote a few years ago that has seemed not to appear correctly in the PowerPoint. We added this list, these verbs take future infinitives, these verbs take present infinitives. So I checked that list. And we only have only one example where it's morphologically unambiguous, which is the verb du je. So here's the quote, the horse head was cut off. The demon lost his magical power, he swayed to and fro. This is the climactic scene in the whole thing, right, where there's the battle between the army of the demons and the army of the monkeys, and then Ravana is invisible. And Rama says, oh, come on, are you such a scaredy cat, you're going to be invisible during this battle. And then he says, just show me your big toe. Yeah. And so the Ravana says, okay, fine, I'll show you my big toe. And then Rama is such a good archer that he calculates how to cut his head off from where his big toe is. And so this is when Ravana is his head is whoosh, cut off, and now he's going to fall down onto the army. So he swayed to and fro and made as if to fall on the army of the men and monkeys. And like in Japanese, I would say, as an auxiliary verb, du in Tibetan can have this function as to make as if to try if you like. So we have this tend to yell, so as yell is to fall, yell to chepa, so to do as to fall, to be about to fall. Yeah. He was about to fall. Yeah. So co-reference between the subject of the superordinate and the subordinate verb is part of the meaning of the present infinitive construction. So I showed it with ng and then I showed it with this one example we have with another superordinate verb. And in all cases, the agent of the matrix verb and the sole argument of the subordinate verb is the same. So I think that co-reference condition is part of the present infinitive construction. How about verbal nouns? Yeah, because we just did the infinitives. Now you want to know about the verbal nouns. Verbal nouns with ng as a matrix verb recall that this is what I just said, right, but it's still a useful reminder. Recall that present infinitives require intransitive subordinate verb and co-reference between the matrix and the subordinate verb. The terminal verbal noun is used whenever one of these two conditions is not met. So we have either co-reference with transitive subordinate verb or intransitive but no co-reference. So let's look at first co-reference but with transitive subordinate verb. So here the speaker, Rishi. Rishi is our, we translate into English as seer. They're these kind of old men who hang out in the forest but have supernatural powers. So he agrees to himself except in marriage, Megasinna, the daughter of Malya Panta. And actually we got this, we got this episode comes up several times in my example. So Malya Panta is trying to breed sort of super villains and so he gets this Rishi to marry his daughter. So here the Rishi says, I consent to take your daughter as consort. And he says it with not because I think it's a, it's a transitive subordinate verb. Okay. Now in the next example, 15, the adversis, the devakutras are asked to agree to themselves, take revenge against the gods. So this is Malya Panta talking now to his, to his grandchildren. He says, would you agree to take revenge and vanquish the gods? He asked. And so here's the verb, it's this dak par ji nang. So remember when he said, do you agree to come? He said, sheksu ji nang. And now he thinks you agree to take revenge. He says, shek par with the, with the par rather than with the dunya. So in the first clause of 16, it is both Rama who does not agree and Rama who would rule if he agreed to, if he had agreed to. So he says, this is Lakshana speaking, who's Rama's brother. Yeah. So this is right at the beginning of the story where they're deciding what to do when, I think when the father dies and so who's going to reign. So even if you don't agree to reign, would you allow me to act as minister under his, under your shoe? So the shoe is going to reign as king. And then Lakshana is going to be the minister. So he says, so here it is again, so it's, it's lunpo ji par ji nang. So to act, to, to, to do minister is what it literally means. Minister is lunpo, ji par is a polite word for to do, ji question word nang. So again, a transitive subordinate verb with, with a, with a terminative verbal noun and the superordinate verb is nang. Okay. So now in a letter to King Rama, excuse me, Hanuman requested Rama does not rebuke him, does not rebuke, you know, Hanuman. So he says, would you agree not to rebuke me? And so again, you see, Ka is to, to rebuke is Ka Bap to, to sort of descend a word. Yeah. So he says, Ka mi Bap pa ji nang she sor ne. Okay. So lots of examples. So those were examples of transitive subordinate verbs. Now examples of no co-reference. So the addressing is asked to agree to let the speakers do something. Subordinate verb transitive. So I'm just, these examples are not about the transitivity, but, but I still just, you know, will make you aware of it. Yeah. Okay. So the first one, would you allow me to act as minister under your shoe? Oh, yes, I have that one already, but it's an example of both. I think, yeah. And would you allow us to salute the queen? They asked 19. Now a demon accidentally asks for the boon of sleep. So the, the demon wants to ask for the boon of eating its enemies, but he actually instead asks to sleep all the time. So the one granting the boon and the one sleeping are not the same. The example is in transitive. So once there was a demon named many years who practiced to acquire the power to eat all fellow creatures, but this is, uh, this is just a long example. So I had to spread over two pages, but by the power of the gods, a goddess of speech transformed onto his tongue and changed his request into, would you allow me to sleep whence he would sleep all the time? So this is a nipar, sorry, nidlok par jin nang. Yeah. That's the phrase I'm looking for right there in the middle. Okay. Now in, uh, example 22, we, I don't know, it's kind of fun example, uh, for the purposes of this paper, because we get both nang and soul. Uh, and the verb G do, uh, subordinate to the verb, uh, nang and G is transitive. But the point is that there's, there's, uh, that there's no co-reference between the superordinate and subordinate subjects, right? So they intended to ask for the power over the three worlds, but the goddess changed this request into would you grant us power over the gods? And here you see, you get it twice, you get first je par sol wa, that's sol, and then you get a la lang wang je par jin nang. So that's what they actually asked for. Uh, and then because she changed it. So, uh, anyhow, that's the example, you know, um, and you'll see that the goddess of speech gets up to all sorts of mischief in this text. Yeah. Okay. So example 23, the second person addressing is maybe co-reference as a subject of, uh, gel par. And it is not obvious that this, I'm all leading up to this example, right? And it's not obvious if gel par, which means to meet someone is transitive or not. So that's the problem with meat. Like we all know this, you know, meat can be reciprocal or it can be transitive. It's a sort of, you know, different languages behave differently. So this is where I'm going from kind of, um, generally speaking, you start with the clear examples and you move to the messy examples, right? So now I have this example where it's not really clear whether there's co-reference. It's not really clear whether it's transitive based on the meaning, but now the construction can tell us, right? Because we've proven what the construction will do. So, um, so the construction, the verb, the term of verbal noun means that either gel is transitive, you consent to meet me, or there is no co-reference, you consent to us meeting. So, uh, so anyhow, you can take a pick and we would need to do more philology to figure out exactly the syntax of gel to meet. This is where, uh, I think Robin is sister, who's a, who's an ugly DMS is trying to seduce Rama. So she says, if it were not an option not to meet, would you consent to meeting once? Yeah. So conclusions, uh, future infinitives constitute a sort of passive that can be used as a polite imperative. Present infinitives require an intransitive subordinate verb and co-reference between the agent of the matrix verb and the sole argument of the subordinate verb. When neither the future or the present infinitive are appropriate, the terminative verbal noun is used. And that's my conclusion.